The Dictator

[Omicron]

Ostara, like any warship worth its iridium plating, had cells designed to contain dangerous prisoners of war they took on their voyage. Ever since they departed, they only had one guest of doubtful honor to reside upon the mentioned decks. The self-declared Kapitän approached solid armored doors that separated him from the prisoner behind the colloquial bars. A guard opened the hatch, allowing them all to see the miserable figure of what was left of Ulrich Findeisen’s dignity. They only fed him as much as it was needed, keeping him alive only as a leverage to be used at a later date - after all, they already got out of him all that they wanted to hear. The HVEB would pay the price for betraying free Rheinland in due time… by the hands of their own compatriots. Like the traitor, Wolf was also planet Hamburg’s native. Prior to the dreaded elections, he had been sent to their headquarters with the mission to gain their support in return for various incentives that a united Bundschuh would offer the ill-equipped and undermanned HVEB. They all knew it was Unioner territory.

Taking a nearby chair, Wolf sat in front of already resigned renegade, staring at him with now emotionless and somewhat tired eyes. “Was it worth it? Setting us back by decades if not more?”

“Not like there was any progress. The only thing she was doing was to take away the little freedom we had left. And your blind following of that autocrat only shows that I was right.”, the prisoner responded through his broken teeth, hissing at the pain the words were inflicting on him - but still defiantly staring up towards Wolf. “Also, ‘Kapitän’, how often do we want to play this game? You come here and seek justification for your power grab, and I give you the hatred you deserve. Can’t you just throw me out the airlock and be done with it?”

Findeisen was a broken man now, his pure spite towards his oppressors being the only pillar that he could grapple to. He lived on with the conviction that he betrayed all his co-conspirators and middle-men in his chain towards the BDM who would no doubt find it hard to continue their lives safely within Rheinland. Wolf was a hardline Eistochterist even if he disagreed with woman at times. When she turned against Klugmann in self-destructive crusade that could sink Bundschuh as a whole, he did not think twice before signing up for Nika Haupt’s camp. His methods remained unchanged, finding the two to not be that much different in practice. Politics and rationale bored him. Action and effect is what mattered.

“You forget at times that I was not trained for mindless slaughter and obeying orders without batting an eye. I was trained by the naval intelligence, the good part of it. Your life is still worth something to me, although not because you are a valuable part of human society in my eyes...”

The captive blinked a few seconds, then coughed up what could be considered a laughter. “You’re not keeping me here so she can execute me herself, are you? She won’t return, you fool. She’s gone. Just like Eistochter before her. Autocrats belong in the gutter, and she’s lucky if it’s the gutter she ended up in. Because the agents that got her didn’t look like they were messing around.”

He shrugged, handing over some food ration in his general direction. Unflavored synth paste, nutritious and not that bad of a food if you can get over it being well… a very boring paste. He had known Freya Eistochter from early on, as he defected the MND in order to serve a higher purpose. The Volksfront had been the unified Bundschuh armed forces of the time, where he had met her and quickly befriended. It was her, who he had enlisted to aid him in crafting the new future for the organization as the Volksfront itself ran out of steam and died not in the thick of combat but fell out of notoriety week by week. The woman had her fair share of issues, but still remained his friend wherever she was gone. As for Haupt? Purely professional, but he had a healthy dose of respect to a woman who knew what she was doing and was self-conscious in which departments she desperately lacked knowledge - As Oberst, she had known who to ask to get the job done - and it had usually been him.

“I am pretty sure the monotony must have been getting to your head lately. Yet if you insist…”

Kapitän Wolf left, disregarding any further comment that his prisoner had planned to address at him.